Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/128

188 when he composed this book, Irvine himself was a man of respectable standing as to years, and had not found it inconsistent with his loyalist principles to take office under Cromwell. The work itself is a true literary curiosity. The monstrous and fanciful doctrines which crowd the pages of Paracelsus and Cardan, and which had begun at that period to sink before the demand for logical proof and practical experience, which more accurate minds had made, are here revived, and even exaggerated; while the imagination of the writer seems to have laboured in all quarters of nature, to discover grotesque absurdities. The book, it will be remarked, is a treatise on animal magnetism. We would give his receipt for (he method of manufacturing " an animal magnet," did we dare, but propriety compels us to retain our comments for the less original portion of the work. The principles of the author, de omnibus rebus etquibusdam aliis, are laid down in "an hundred aphorisms," which are of such a nature as the following: "Neither souls, nor pure spirits, nor intelligencies can work upon bodies, but by means of the spirit; for two extremes cannot be joined together without a mean, therefore," it is justly and conclusively argued, "demons appear not but after sacrifices used."—"He that can join a spirit impregnat with the virtue of one bodie with another, that is now disposed to change, may produce many miracles and monsters."—"He that can by light draw light out of things, or multiply light with light, he knoweth how to adde the universal spirit of life to the particular spirit of life, and by this addition do wonders," &c. Nor is his method of supporting his aphorisms by proof less original and conclusive. The readers of Hudibras will recollect the story taken from Helemont, of the man who, having lost his nose, procured a new one to be cut from the limb of a porter, on whose death the unfortunate nose grew cold and fell off. The reasoning of Mr Christopher Irvine on this matter is peculiarly metaphysical. "Is not," he says, "all our doctrine here confirmed clearer than the light? was not the insititious nose as animated at the first, so still informed with the soul of the porter? Neither had it any from the man whose nose now it was made, but only nourishment; the power of the assimilation which it hath from its proper form, it took it not from him but from the porter, of whom it was yet truly a part; and who dying, the nose became a dead nose, and did immediately tend to corruption. But who doth not here see, most openly and evidently, a concatenation? otherwise, how could the nose of one that was at Bolonia, enform the nose of one that was at Brussels, but by means of a concatenation?" The curiosity of the matter, presenting a specimen of the speculations in which several Scottish philosophers at that period indulged, may excuse these extracts.

The work to which Irvine's name is most frequently attached, is the "Histories Scoticae Nomenclatura Latino-Vernacula;" an explanatory dictionary of the Latin proper names made use of in Scottish history, published at Edinburgh in 1682, and republished in 1819. The editor of the reprint observes, that he "intended, along with the present edition, to have given the public a short sketch of the life of the author; but this intention he has been obliged to relinquish from want of materials. To numerous enquiries, in many directions, no satisfactory answer was procured, and the editor mentions with regret, that h knows nothing more of this eminent literary character, and profound philologist, than can be collected from his address to the reader." The dedication is to the duke of York ; and if we had not been furnished with vast specimens of the capacity of royal stomachs at that period for flattery, we might have suspected Mr Christopher of a little quizzing, when he enlarges on the moderation, the generosity, the kindness to friends, the forgiveness to enemies, displayed by the prince, and especially on his having "so firmly on solid grounds established the protestant religion." Among the other eulogiums is one which may be inter-